In a remote monitoring system having a server of a monitored device and a monitoring center, when the server detects that abnormality is found, the abnormality is informed from the server to the monitoring center via a network.
The server is divided into a plurality of logical devices (virtual servers) by improvement of performance, and the virtual servers operate. Further, on a guest OS used for virtual server, the security is improved between a host OS and the guest OS and between the guest OSs, thereby limiting a mutual accessible range. Further, when the virtual servers perform an operation, software such as the guest OS is arranged on a shared disk to be started from an alternate server, and the guest OS can be started from two servers. With the system, if hardware of the server that is operated is broke down, the software such as the guest OS is restarted from the alternate server, and the operation continues.
The guest OS of the virtual server cannot read information on the hardware. Therefore, only information collected in the host OS or the guest OS is sent to the monitoring center.
In the system, the server of a monitored device can detect abnormality on the software operated on the guest OS due to a failure of the hardware. In this case, the abnormality of the hardware and the abnormality of the software are notified to the monitoring center, respectively. The monitoring center cannot correlate the hardware and the software with a fact as whether or not the hardware and the software are operated on the same server. Because there is not information on the hardware that specifies the server with respect to the abnormality information on the software. As a consequence, a support person that supports failure and recovery on the basis of notification of the monitoring center requires operation for specifying the server with respect to the abnormality information on the software. Therefore, the determination that the two pieces of the abnormality information are notified from the same server cannot be immediately performed.